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Regardless,there is one thing a clever phone just has to offer & that’s getting through afull day or 2 without having to recharge the battery. This is an area where all the android phones struggling a bit. I often finish up having to give it some more juice in the coursework of the afternoon or early evening with the default factory settings. That’s fine for a laptop computer but not acceptable for a clever phone.

It is simple to say that I’m a satisfied owner of the Samsung Galaxy 551 since a couple of weeks. Overall, the clever phone is great & being able to run apps & processes in background gives it a clear edge over the iPhone. On the other hand, there are several areas where the Apple experience is just a lot smoother. Without going in to details I hope the rumoured couple of Android updates still this year will help ease these early misses.

To solve this I have been fiddling with the settings some time to maximize the battery life & below is a short summary of how I have managed to get through a heavy usage day without having to recharge the phone. One of the not so secret ingredients to a long battery life is to minimize active network connections and that’s also where I focus my tweaking work below.

On the Home screen, select Menu => Settings => Wireless controls => Mobile networksettings & de-select Enable always-on mobile data. This tweak probably has the largest impact on battery life.

This can be disabled by Menu => Settings => Location => Use wireless networks. This will turn off the anonymous (?) Google location information collection that makes use of the wireless information connection often. I still keep the GPS tick box checked as it is not an always-on configuration. Any app that will need a location will turn on the GPS separately. note that turning off wireless network usage for location purposes will slow down the GPS positioning fix when needed but that’s a trade off Iâm ready to do.

This checkbox is hidden behind Menu => Settings => Information synchronization => Google => Background information. This will minimize background information usage
Note! In case you are using Gmail, Calendar & Contacts on your android phone you need to have this enabled or it will disable automatic sync with Google online servers.

In case you still need to make use of your Wi-Fi connection I highly recommend installing the free Y5 Battery Saver application. It automatically turns off the Wi-Fi when when out of range & allows it again when you are close to known access points to save battery life . not that this app itself will use some resources & can slightly reduce battery life but you ought to still be on the winning side in case you are away from your known Wi-Fi networks most of the day.

With these settings I’m easily getting through a full day of Androiding with a little disclaimer regarding my speaking habits that some days drain the battery much faster.